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Speech of Mr. Marsh, of Vermont, on the Bill for Establishing
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Speech of Mr. Marsh, of Vermont, on the Bill for Establishing
The Smithsonian Institution

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Published by: University of Vermont. All rights reserved.

Speech of Mr. Marsh, of Vermont, on the Bill for Establishing The Smithsonian
Institution,

Delivered in The House of Representatives of the U. States, April 22, 1846.
Washington: Printed by J. & G. S. Gideon. 1846

Note.

The history of the Smithsonian Fund is briefly as follows: JAMES SMITHSON, OF London,
who died at Genoa, several years since, bequeathed the reversion of his whole estate
to the United States of America, to "found at Washington, under the name of the
Smithsonian Institution, an establishment for the increase and diffusion of
knowledge among men."

The bequest was communicated to Congress, by the President, on the 17th December,
1835, and was accepted by Congress, by an act approved July 1st, 1836, pledging "the
faith of the United States" to the due application of the fund to the purposes of
the bequest.

On the 1st of September, 1838, the proceeds of the estate, amounting to $508,318[.]
46, were paid into the United States Mint, and, by authority of Congress, were
invested in State stocks, principally of the State of Arkansas.

The bill reported by the Special Committee, at the present session, provides for
expending the interest already accrued in buildings and other accommodations for the
Institution, and for appropriating the interest to accrue hereafter to the purposes
indicated in the following remarks.

The House being in Committee of the Whole, and having under consideration the bill
for establishing the Smithsonian Institution ----

MR. MARSH, of Vermont, after some preliminary observations, said: I agree, Mr.
Chairman, with those who doubt whether it was entirely wise in the Congress of the
United States to accept the munificent bequest of Mr. Smithson. Were the question
now first presented, I should hesitate. Not that I deny or even doubt the power of
Congress to administer this charity, but I should question the propriety of assuming
a trust, which there is too much reason to fear we shall not discharge in such a
manner as to give the fullest effect to the purposes of the enlightened donor. The
history of this bequest confirms these scruples. It is now nearly ten years since
Congress, by a solemn act, assumed the trust, and pledged "the faith of the United
States" to its faithful execution. The money was soon after received, and
immediately passed out of the hands of the Government, not irrecoverably, it is to
be hoped, but it is, at all events, now beyond our control, and no portion of it has
been yet applied to the noble ends of the bequest. The difficulties which have thus
far prevented the application of the fund to its proper uses still exist, and are of
a character not likely to be removed. Our Government has no department which can be
conveniently charged with the administration of the charity, and must, therefore,
begin with the organization of one for that special purpose. In this incipient step,
we meet with obstacles at every corner. Questions are at once raised that are not
yet solved, and are certainly in themselves of no easy solution. How far
can, how far ought, Congress to act in the direct control
of the charity--how far should it make specific what the will of the testator has
left general? If Congress shall direct the particular uses to which the fund shall
be applied, what shall those uses be? Or shall we, on the other hand, delegate the
trust; and, if so, shall we impose its duties on departments already too heavily
burdened with official responsibilities, or shall we create a corporation or other
special agency for the purpose? Is there not danger that the institution will be
abused for party ends, and merely serve to swell the already overgrown patronage of
the Executive? A previous suggestion of these difficulties might well have led us to
hesitate, before we contracted obligations of so delicate a character, and I fear
they are yet destined for some time longer to impede the satisfactory action of
Congress.

But it is now quite time that we apply ourselves in earnest to the work of redeeming
our country from the reproach of infidelity in the discharge of so high and solemn a
trust, and that at the earliest practicable period, and before the subject shall
become an element in our party dissensions, we strive to make available to our
fellow-citizens, and to all men, a gift as splendid as its purposes are noble.

The delay, long and unwarrantable as it is, has not been without its uses. It has
afforded abundant time for the collection, comparison, and concentration of opinion;
able men in every walk of scholastic and professional life have been consulted; many
of the wisest American statesman have

brought the energies of their intellects to the examination of the subject; it has
been largely discussed in both branches of the national legislature; numerous
studiously considered plans have been suggested, providing in different ways for
every interest which can be supposed to be embraced within the views of the
testator, and the bill now before us is a compilation, an anthology, so to speak,
from all these, though possessing original features--valuable features--the credit
of which belongs to the chairman of the Special Committee, (Mr. OWEN,) by whom the
bill was reported.

In a case where there is room for so great diversity of opinion as in this, there can
be no hope of the adoption of any plan not conceived in a spirit of compromise; and
on this, as on another larger question, however widely apart we may be at first, we
shall probably find ourselves in the end obliged to settle down upon the parallel of
49o. The bill is reported by the special committee as a compromise, and probably no
one of the gentlemen concerned in its preparation is quite satisfied with its
provisions; no one believes it to be the best plan that could be devised; but they
felt the necessity of deferring to each other, as well as to the probable opinion of
Congress, and were nearly unanimous in thinking it more likely to harmonize
discordant views than any other plan suggested. It was in this belief, and in
consideration of the importance and the duty of early action, that I, as a member of
that committee, assented to the report, regarding the scheme, however, not merely as
a necessary compromise, but as rather an experiment, which admitted, and which I
trusted would hereafter receive, great changes in its conditions, than as a complete
working model.

It has all along been assumed as a cardinal principle, that we ought to follow
implicitly the will of the liberal donor, and it has been thought unfortunate that
he was not more specific in the appropriation of his bounty. But he has given a
proof ofa generous and enlightened spirit, and at the same time has paid this nation
the highest possible compliment, by using the largest and most comprehensive
language in his bequest; thus in effect saying, that he preferred rather to entrust
the disposal of this great fund to the wisdom and intelligence of a free and
enlightened people, than to limit its use to purposes accordant with his own
peculiar tastes. Some gentlemen have thought, that inasmuch as the testator has not
specified the particular mode by which he would have the great ends of his charity
accomplished, we are bound to infer his wishes from the character of his favorite
pursuits, and to conform to his supposed views, by confining the fund to the
promotion of objects, to the cultivation of which his own time and researches were
devoted. But this would be no true conformity to the enlightened liberality which
prompted so munificent a gift. It would be a disparagement to so generous a spirit
to imagine, that while saying so much, he meant so little. It would be so wide a
departure from his large and wise purposes, as fairly to defeat his noble aims. Had
he been in fact a person of so narrow views as this argument supposes, he would have
guarded against the possible misapplication of his charity, by express words of
direction or restriction; and it is a proof of rare generosity in an enthusiastic
lover of an engrossing pursuit, that in a bequest appropriating his whole estate to
the high purpose of increasing and diffusing knowledge among men, he made no special
provision for the promotion of those sciences which were to him the most attractive
of studies.

After all, however, he was not a student of so limited a range of inqury as has been
sometimes assumed. He was a man of studious and scholastic

habits, and of large and liberal research, specially devoted, indeed, to the
cultivation of certain branches of natural knowledge, but excluding no science, no
philosophy, from his sympathies. Too enlightened to be ignorant of the commune
vinculum, the common bond of mutual relation, which makes all knowledge,
reciprocally communicative and receptive--each borrowing light from all, and each in
turn reflecting light upon all--he was too generous to confine his bounty to the
gratification of tastes entirely similar to his own. None of the objects embraced in
this bill are alien from his probably views. Books, indeed, he did not collect, as
we propose to do, because to one who had no fixed habitation a library would have
been but an encumbrance; and he lived in the great cities of Europe, where public
and private munificence has collected and devoted to general use such ample
repositories of the records of knowledge, that individual accumulation of such
stores is almost superfluous. But, though he gathered no library, his writings show
him to have been a man of somewhat multifarious reading; and it is quite a
gratuitous assumption to suppose him to have been one of those narrow minds, who
think no path worth traveling but that which they have trodden, no field worth
cultivating whose fruits they have never plucked. Apart, then, from the liberty
which the broad words of the will give us, we are entitled to believe that the
purposes of the testator were as comprehensive as the language he has used--that he
aimed at promoting all knowledge for the common benefit of all men--and to
appropriate to the American people, in a spirit worthy of the object and of
ourselves, the compliment he has paid us, by selecting us as the dispensers of a
charity which knows no limits but the utmost bounds of human knowledge, and claims
as its recipients the men of this and of all coming ages.

The limitation of the bequest, then, is to the "increase and diffusion of knowledge
among men." Here two objects are aimed at. Increase, enlargement, extension,
progress; and Diffusion, spread, communication, dissemination. These the bill seeks
to accomplish by various means. It proposes to increase knowledge by
collecting specimens of the works of nature, from every clime, and in each of her
kingdoms; by gathering objects in every branch of industrial, decorative,
representative, and imaginative art; by accumulating the records of human action ,
and thought, and imagination, in every form of literature; by instituting
experimental researches in agriculture, in horticulture, in chemistry, and in other
studies founded upon observation. It proposes to diffuse the knowledge
thus accumulated, acquired, and extended, by throwing open to public use the
diversified collections of the institution in every branch of human inquiry; by
lectures upon every subject of liberal interest; by a normal school, where teachers
shall become pupils, and the best modes that experience has devised for imparting
the rudiments of knowledge shall be communicated; by preparing and distribution
models of scientific apparatus, and by the publication of lectures, essays, manual,
and treatises.

Of the various instrumentalities recommended by this noble and imposing scheme, the
simplest and most efficient, both as it respects the increase and the diffusion of
knowledge, is, in my judgment, the provision for collecting for public use a
library, a museum, and a gallery of art; and I should personally much prefer, that
for a reasonable period the entire income of the fund should be expended in carrying
out this branch of the plan.

But in expressing my preference for such a present application of the moneys of the
fund, and my belief that we should thus best accomplish the

purposes of the donor, I desire not to be understood as speaking contemptuously of
research and experiment in natural knowledge and the economic arts. I have too much
both of interest and of feeling staked upon the prosperity of these arts, and they
are to me subjects too intrinsically attractive, to allow me to be indifferent to
any measure which promises to promote their advancement. I am even convinced, that
their earnest cultivation and extension are absolutely indispensable to our national
prosperity, our true independence, and almost our political existence; and I am at
all times ready to maintain their claim to all the legislative favor which it is
within the power of the General Government to bestow. I would not, therefore,
exclude them from the plan of a great national institution for the promotion of all
good learning; but I desire to assign them their true place in the scale of human
knowledge, and I must be permitted to express my dissent from the doctrine implied
by the bill, as originally framed and referred to the Special Committee, which
confines all knowledge, all science, to the numerical and quantitative values of
material things. Researches in such branches as were the favored objects of that
bill, have in general little of a really scientific character. Geology, mineralogy,
even chemistry, are but assemblages of apparent facts empirically established; and
this must always be true, to a great extent, of every study which rests upon
observation and experiment alone. True science is the classification and arrangement
of necessary primary truths, according to their relations with each other, and in
reference to the logical deductions which may be made from them. Such science, the
only absolute knowledge, is the highest and worthiest object of human
inquiry, and must be drawn from deeper sources than the crucible and the retort.

The bill provides for the construction of buildings, with suitable apartments for a
library, and for collections in the various branches of natural knowledge and of
art, and directs the annual expenditure of a sum "not exceeding an average of ten
thousand dollars, for the gradual formation of a library composed of valuable works
pertaining to all department of human knowledge." As I have already indicated, I
consider this the most valuable feature of the plan, though I think the amount
unwisely restricted; and I shall confine the few observations I design to submit
respecting the bill chiefly to the consideration of this single provision. I had
originally purposed to examine the subject from quite a different point of view, but
the eloquent remarks of the Chairman of the Special Committee, (Mr. OWEN,) which
seem to be intended as an argument rather against this provision than in favor of
the bill, and as a reply to the able and brilliant speech of a distinguished member
of another branch of Congress, upon a former occasion, (Mr. CHOATE,) has induced me
to take a somewhat narrower range than I should otherwise have done. I wish, sir,
that Senator were here to rejoin, in his own proper person, to the beautiful speech
of the gentleman from Indiana, who seems rather to admire the rhetoric, than to be
convinced by the logic, of the eloquent orator to whom I refer. In that case, sir, I
think my friend from Indiana, trenchant as are his own weapons, would feel, as many
have felt before, that the polished blade of the gentleman, who lately did such
honor to Massachusetts in the Senate of the United States, is not the less keen,
because, like Harmodius and Aristogiton, he wraps it in sprays of myrtle.

It has been objected by some, that the appropriation is too large for the purpose
expressed-- "The gradual formation of a library composed of valu-

able works pertaining to all departments of human knowledge." But if we consider how
much is embraced in these comprehensive words, we shall arrive at a very different
conclusion. The great libraries of Europe range from 200,000 to half a million, or
perhaps even 750,000 volumes. That of the University of Gottingen, the most useful
of all for the purposes of general scholarship, contains about 300,000. How long
would it require to collect a library like this, with an annual expenditure of ten
thousand dollars? The Library of Congress is said to have cost about $3.50 per
volume; but, as a whole, it has not been economically purchased, and though composed
chiefly of works which do not maintain a permanently high price, yet as a large
proportion of the annual purchases consist of new books from the press
of London, the dearest book market in the world, its cost has been much higher than
that of a great miscellaneous library ought to be. The best public library in
America, for its extent, (10,000 volumes,) which I am happy to say is that of the
university of my native State, Vermont, cost but $1.50 per volume. It can hardly be
expected, that Government, which always pays the highest price, will be so favorably
dealt with; and it is scarcely to be hoped, that it will succeed in securing the
services of so faithful and so competent an agent as was employed by the University
of Vermont.

I have myself been, unfortunately for my purse, a book-buyer, and have had occasion
to procure books, not only in this country, but from all the principal book marts in
Western Europe. From my own experience, and some inquiry, I am satisfied that the
whole cost of such books as a national library ought to consist of, including
binding and all other charges, except the compensation and traveling expenses of an
agent, should not exceed two dollars per volume. If you allow $2,000 for the
compensation and expenses of an agent, (which would not be increased upon a
considerably larger expenditure,) you have $8,000 remaining, which, at the average
cost I have supposed, would purchase four thousand volumes a year. How long, I
repeat, would it require at this rate to accumulate a library equal in extent to
that of Gottingen? More than seventy years. In some seventy years, then, in three
score years and ten, when you, sir, and I, and all who hear my voice, and all the
present actors in this busy world shall be numbered with dead, we may hope, that
free, enlightened America, by the too sparing use of the generous bounty of a
stranger, will possess a collection of the recorded workings of the human mind, not
inferior to that now enjoyed by a single school in the miniature kingdom of Hanover!
And what provision is made for the increase of books meanwhile? Look at the activity
of the presses of London and Paris--at the vastly prolific literature of Germany--at
the increasing production in our own country--to omit the smaller but still valuable
contributions to the store of human knowledge in the languages of other countries,
and you will perceive that this appropriation, so far from being extravagantly
large, will scarcely even suffice for keeping up with the current literature of the
day. Gottingen mean time will go on. Her 300,000 volumes will increase in seventy
years to half a million, and we shall still lag 200,000 volumes behind.

The utility of great libraries has been questioned, and it has been confidently
asserted, that all truly valuable knowledge is comprised in a comparatively small
number of volumes. It is said that the vast collections of the Vatican, of Paris, of
Munich, and of Copenhagen are, in a great measure, composed of works originally
worthless, or now obsolete, or superseded by

new editions, or surpassed by later treatises. That there is some foundation for this
opinion I shall not deny; but after every deduction is made upon these accounts,
there will still remain in any of these libraries a great number of works which,
having originally had intrinsic worth, have yet their permanent value. Because a
newer, or better, or truer book, upon a given subject, now exists, it does not
necessarily follow that the older and inferior is to be rejected. It may contain
important truths or interesting views that later, and, upon the whole, better
authors have overlooked--it may embody curious anecdotes of forgotten times--it may
be valuable as an illustration of the history of opinion, or as a model of
composition; or, if of great antiquity, it may possess much interest as a specimen
of early typography.

Again, because any one individual, even the most learned, cannot, in this short life,
exhaust all art, because he can thoroughly master but a few hundred volumes, read,
or even have occasion to consult, but a few thousands, we are not therefore
authorized to conclude that all beyond these are superfluous. Each of the hundred
authors, who have produced those thousands of volumes, had read also
his thousands. The scholar is formed, not by the books alone that he
has read, but he receives, at second hand, the essence of multitudes of others; for
every good book supposes and implies the previous existence of numerous other good
books.

An individual even of moderate means, and who is content to confine his studies
within somewhat narrow bounds, may select and acquire for himself a library adequate
to his own intellectual wants and tastes, though entirely unsuited to the purposes
of one of different or larger aims, and by the diligent use of this, he may attain a
high degree of mental culture; but a national library can be accommodated to no
narrow or arbitrary standard. It must embrace all science--all history--all
languages. It must be extensive enough, and diversified enough, to furnish aliment
for the cravings of every appetite. We need some great establishment, that shall not
hoard its treasures with the jealous niggardliness which locks upon the libraries of
Britain, but shall emulate the generous munificence which throws open to the world
the boundless stores of literary wealth of Germany and France--some exhaustless
fountain, where the poorest and humblest aspirant may slake his thirst for
knowledge, without money and without price.

Of all places in our territory, this central heart of the nation is the fittest for
such an establishment. It is situated in the middle zone of our system--easily and
cheaply accessible from every quarter of the Union--blessed with a mild, a
salubrious, and an equable climate--abundant in the necessaries and comforts of
physical life--far removed from the din of commerce, and free from narrow and
sectional influences.

Let us here erect such a temple of the muses, served and guarded by no exclusive
priesthood, but with its hundred gates thrown open, that every votary may enter
unquestioned, and you will find it thronged with ardent worshippers, who, though
poverty may compel them to subsist, like Heyne, on the pods of pulse and the parings
of roots, shall yet forget the hunger of the body in the more craving wants of the
soul.

From the limited powers of our National Government, and the jealous care with which
their exercise is watched and resisted, in cases where the interests of mere
humanity--not party--are concerned, it can do little for the general promotion of
literature and science. The present is a rare opportunity, the only one yet offered,
and never, perhaps, to be repeated, for taking our proper place among the nations of
the earth, not merely as a

political society, but as patrons of knowledge and the liberal arts. The treasures of
our national wealth are, perhaps, not at our command for this purpose; and it is
only by the discreet use of this bequest, and of the funds which private liberality
will assuredly contribute to extend the means of the institution, that we can hope
to kindle a luminary, whose light shall encompass the earth, and repay to Europe the
illumination we have borrowed from her.

The library of Gottingen, of which I have spoken, contains six times as many volumes
as the largest American collections; it has been accumulated within a comparatively
short period-- scarcely a century--and, having been selected upon a fixed plan by
the ablest scholars in the world, it contains few books originally without merit,
few duplicates, and few which the progress of science and literature have rendered
worthless. And yet, though upon the whole the best existing library, it, in many
departments, does not approach to completeness; and the scholars who resort to it
are often obliged to seek elsewhere sources of knowledge which Gottingen does not
afford.

We shall perhaps be best able to estimate our own deficiencies and wants by comparing
the contents of our Congressional library with the actual extent of existing
literature. The library of Congress contains more than 40,000 volumes, in general
valuable and well chosen, with not many duplicates, not many books that one would
altogether reject. It is not composed, like too many of our public libraries, in any
considerable degree, of books which have been given, because the
proprietor found them too worthless to keep, but it has been almost wholly purchased
and selected from the best European sale catalogues, and yet there is no one branch
of liberal study, even among those of greatest interest to ourselves, in which it is
not miserably deficient.

There is, perhaps, no better general catalogue of such books, in the various
department of learning, as are prized by collectors, than the Table Methodique, in
the last edition of Brunet's Manuel du Libraire. Brunet enumerates more than 30,000
works, making, in the whole, about 100,000 volumes, and professes to specify only
the most important and the rarest. The list contains, no doubt, very many works of
little intrinsic worth, or even adventitious interest; but it is, perhaps, not too
much to say, that a library of the larger class ought to possess at least 25,000 of
the volumes it specifies. But this list is even tolerably complete in but few
departments. In French history and liberature, in civil and international law, in
the history and literature of classical antiquity and of early typography, in
theology, in medicine, you will find it perhaps nearly satisfactory; but in the
history and literature of all other nations, and in almost every other field of
inquiry but those I have mentioned, the learned scholar will miss the titles of many
more valuable works than he will find, while many highly interesting and important
chapters are almost entirely blank. The Congressional library does not probably
contain one-fourth even of the small proportion of Brunet's list which I have
described as of intrinsic and permanent value. But are there not numerous branches
of knowledge well worthy a place in every great literary repository, and which are
yet wholly unrepresented in our alcoves? Let us devote a moment to some dry
statistics concerning the lierature of continental Europe. The Bibliotheca Historica
Sueo-Gothica of Warmholtz, the lasts volume of which appeared in 1817, enumerates no
less than 10,000 works illustrative of the history of Sweden alone; and
the thirty years since have added greatly to the number. The Literature-Lexicon of

Nyerup, published in 1820, gives the title of probably an equal number of works
belonging to the literature of the countries subject to the Danish crown. Holland,
too, has noble historians, naturalists, poets, and dramatists, and has produced many
worksof unsurpassed value upon the history of commerce and navigation. The list of
Brunet contains not one in a hundred of the standard authors of these several
countries; and the library of Congress, as far as I remember, does not possess a
volume in the language of either of them. Again, consider the vast extent and
surpassing value of the literatures of Germany. Of the 3,000,000 different volumes
of printed books supposed to exist, it is computed that more than one-third are in
the German language. The learning of Germany embraces every field of human inquiry,
and the efforts of her scholars have done more to extend the bounds of modern
knowledge than the united labors of the rest of the Christian world. Every scholar
familiar with her literature--let me not say familiar, for life is too
short for any man to count its boundless treasure--but every enlightened student who
has but dipped into it, will readily confess its infinite superiority to any other,
I might almost say to all other literatures. It has been affirmed, that more than
one-half of our population is of recent German origin, and German is the vernacular
tongue of extensive districts of American soil. Yet the library of Congress contains
not one hundred, probably not fifty, volumes in that noble language. You have none
of the numerous writers of the vast empire of Russia, or of Poland; nothing of the
curious literatures of Hungary and Bohemia; only the commonest books in Italian and
Spanish; not a volume in the language of Portugal, rich as it is in various
literature, and especially in the wild yet true romance of oriental discovery and
conquest, that comes down to us through the pages of learned De Barros and quaint
old Castanheda, ringing upon the ear and stirring the blood like the sound of a
far-off trumpet. In the boundless world, too, of oriental learning, of which our
increasing commercial relations with the countries of the East render it highly
desirable that we should possess the means of acquiring a knowledge, you have
nothing to shew but a few translations of the Bible, and perhaps some works of
devotion or elementary religious doctrine, which American missionaries have
presented you.

Will it not be admitted that an American library, the national library of a people
descended from men of every clime, and blood, and language--a country which throws
open its doors as an asylum for the oppressed of every race and every tongue, should
be somewhat more comprehensive in its range? That is should at least have some
representatives of every branch of human learning, some memorials of every written
tongue that is spoken within its borders?

But, even in English literature, our library is sadly meagre. How far are we from
possessing a tolerably complete series of the English printed books of the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries, or even of that best age of English learning, that age with
which every honest American most truly sympathizes, the age of Cromwell and of
Milton? Would it not be well to have at our command the means of enabling some
diligent scholar to write what has not yet been worthily written, or indeed scarce
even attempted, a complete history of the literature of our Anglo-Saxon mother
tongue--or to perform that Herculean task, which, in spite of the vaunted but feeble
labors of Webster, remains still to be accomplished, the preparation of a
respectable English dictionary?

If there is any department of learning, in which a library selected for the

use of the representatives of a democracy should be complete, it is that of history.
But what have we of the sources of historical investigation? Histories
indeed we have, but little history. True, we have Robertson, and Hume,
and Voltaire, and Gibbon, and, above all, Alison, a popular writer in these days,
and --

"Like Sir Agrippa, for profound

And solid lying, much renowned;"

but of those materials from which true history is to be drawn, we have
little, very little. The works belonging to the proper history of the American
continent alone, every one of which it would be highly desirable to possess, number
certainly more than 20,000 volumes, fully equal to one-half the Congressional
library, and of these we have, as yet, but a small proportion.

If the bounty of the generous foreigner, in spite of the broad language which
expresses his liberal purpose, is to be confined to the narrow uses which some
gentlemen propose, the appropriation of $10,000 per annum is unnecessarily large, at
least for permanent expenditure. A moderate amount would collect all that is worth
buying in the experimental sciences, and a small annual appropriation would keep up
with the advance of knowledge in this department. But it is due to ourselves, due to
our age, due to the lofty views which inspired a benefaction so splendid-- a gift
clogged with no narrow conditions--that we act in a more generous, a wider, a more
catholic spirit; that we remember, that "knowledge" embraces other arts than those
of bread; that man's economical interests are not his highest.

The purpose of the testator, which we are to carry out, was "the increase and
diffusion of knowledge among men." What, then, is the most efficient means of
increasing and diffusing knowledge? Increase, accumulation, must precede diffusion.
Every rill supposes a fountain; and knowledge cannot "flow down our streets like a
river," without there be first built and filled a capacious reservoir, from which
those streams shall issue. It is an error to suppose that the accumulation of the
stores of existing learning, the amassing of the records of intellectual action,
does not tend also to increase knowledge. What is there
new in the material world, except by extraction or combination? How are
new substances formed, or the stock of a given substance increased, by the chemistry
of nature or of art? By new combinations or decompositions of known and pre-existing
elements. The products of the experimental or manufacturing laboratory are no new
creations; but their elements are first extracted by the decomposition of old
compounds, and then recombined in new forms. Thus is it also, in some degree, with
the immaterial products of the human mind; but there is this difference; knwledge
grows not alone by extraction and combination, but, unlike the dead matter with
which chemistry deals, it is itself organic, living, productive. There is moreover,
as I have already hinted, between all branches of knowledge and of liberal art,
whether speculative or experimental, such an indissoluble bond, such a relation of
interdependence, that you cannot advance any one without at the same time promoting
all others. The pioneer in every walk of science strikes out sparks, that not only
guide his own researches, but illuminate also the paths of those around him, though
they may be laboring in quite other directions. Examples of this kind migh be
multiplied without end, but I will content myself with an illustration or two from a
science which deals only in abstract numbers and imaginary quantities, and utterly
rejects experiment and observation as tests of truth or as instruments of its
discovery. Who would

have supposed that the intervals of the diatonic scale in music were capable of exact
appreciation, and their relations of precise ascertainment, by numerical quantities?
Who would have expected that pure mathematics would have been appealed to to decide
between the rival claims of the corpuscular and the undulatory theories of light; or
to ascertain the proportions and relations of elementary bodies not appreciable by
any of the senses, in chemical combinations; or, as my accomplished friend from
South Carolina (Mr. HOLMES) suggests, that the authenticity of a disputed text in
the Scriptures would be determined by an algebraical theorem? What do not astronomy,
navigation, civil engineering, practical mechanics, and all the experimental
sciences, owe to this one science, which in its investigations appeals to no
empiricism, calls in the aid of none of the senses, none of the machinery of art or
of nature?

But, independent of this particular point, the aid which the physical sciences may
expect to derive from mere speculative knowledge, I should hope that at this time,
and in this place, one might safely venture a plea in behalf of all that higher
knowledge which serves to humanize, to refine, to elevate, to make men more deeply
wise, better, less thoughtful of material interests, and more regardful of eternal
truths. And let it not be said that our own brief history proves that great
libraries are superfluous, because without them we have produced statesmen,
civilians, orators, and jurisprudents, no wise inferior to the ablest of their
European contemporaries. Without dwelling upon the stimulus of popular institutions,
and the stirring excitement of our revolutionary and later history, which have
tended to encourage the development of this species of talent, the objection is
sufficiently answered by say that, in the case of most of the American statesmen of
the Revolution, as well as of many of later date, private wealth has supplied the
place of public provisions for the attainment of knowledge. In the period of our
colonial history, the sons of wealthy families were often educated in the best
schools of Europe, and the framers of our Constitution were chiefly men of high
education and elegant attainments. Jefferson, whose writings are canonical with the
Democracy, had the best private library in America, and was a man of multifarious,
if not of profound learning. The State papers of that remarkable era are, with few
exceptions, obviously productions of men not merely of inspired genius or of patient
thought, but of laborious acquisition; and they are full, not of that cheap learning
which is proved by pedantic quotation, but of that sound discipline which is the
unequivocal result of extensive reading and diligent research. Who have been the
men, in all ages, that have exercised the wisest and most permanent influence both
on the moral and physical well-being of man? The spirit of the crusades was roused
by the preaching of a thoughtful solitary; Columbus was a learned scholar, and
Luther but a studious monk. Watt, the great improver of the steam engine, was a man
of curious and recondite learning. Bonaparte was carefully educated at the school of
Brienne, and was through life a liberal patron of learning and the arts. The
glorious rebellion of 1649 was the work of men of the closet; and Milton, who to our
shame is less known among us by his prose than by his poetry, was its apostle. Our
own independence was declared and maintained by scholars, and all men know that the
French revolution had its germ in the writings of the Encyclopedist. All men, in
fact, who have acted upon opinion, who have contributed to establish principles that
have left their impress for ages, have spent some part of their lives in scholastic

retirement. It is this very point--the maintenance of principles discovered and
defended by men prepared for that service by severe discipline and laborious
study--that so strikingly distinguishes the English rebellion of 1649 and our own
Revolution from most other insurrectionary movements, and particularly from the
French revolution. The English and American statesmen of those two periods were
contending for truths, the French atheists and philosophers for
interests; the former sought to learn their duties;
the latter concerned themselves only about their rights; the
Anglo-Saxon was inspired by principle, the Gaul was instigated by
passion.

The principles of American liberty, which education and habit have rendered so
familiar to us, that we fancy them intuitive or even instinctive, are in truth no
more obvious than the physical theory of the universe; and the study of the
philosophical and political history of the last three centuries will convince every
enquirer, that their development from their germs, as involved in the fundamental
doctrines of the Reformation, has been the work not of unconscious time only, but
has required the labor of successive generations of philosophers and statesmen.

I look upon a great and well selected library, composed of the monuments of all
knowledge, in all tongues, as the most effective means of releasing us from the
slavish deference, which, in spite of our loud and vaporing protestations of
independence, we habitually pay to English precedents and authorities, in all
matters of opinion. Our history and our political experience are so brief, that, in
the multitude of new cases which are perpetually arising, we are often at a loss for
domestic parallels, an d find it cheaper to cite an English dictum than to
investigate a question upon more independent grounds. Not only are our parliamentary
law, our legislative action, our judicial proceedings, to a great extent fashioned
after those of the mother country, but the fundamental principles of our government,
our theory of the political rights of man, are often distorted, in order that they
may be accommodated to rules and definitions drawn from English constitutional law.
Even the most sacred of political rights, the right of petition, I have heard both
attacked and defended upon this floor, by very sufficient democrats, entirely upon
precedents drawn from the practice of the British Parliament. Our community of
origin, language, and law, exposes the younger nation to the constant danger of
being overshadowed by the authority of the elder. it is a great evil to a young and
growing people, as well as to a youthful and aspiring spirit, to have its energies
cramped, and its originality smothered, by a servile spirit of conformity to any one
model however excellent; and it is quite time for us to learn, that there are other
sources of instruction than the counsels and example of our ancient mother.

Sir, I make these remarks in no narrow feeling of jealous hostility to England; still
less at this crisis, when some are seeking to raise a whirlwind of popular
indignation against that country, upon which they may themselves float to power,
would I join in any vulgar denunciations of a people from whom we have borrowed so
much. We owe to England much of our political principles, many of the foundations of
our civil and religious liberties, many of the most valuable features of our
jurisprudence. Something, indeed, we have repaid. England, in common with all
Europe, has profited by our experience. The grasp of feudal oppression has been
relaxed, the atrocious severity of the criminal law has been mitigated. judicial
proceedings have been simplified, the subject has been admitted to a larger

participation in the concerns of government, monopolies are becoming obsolete, and
the responsibilities of rulers are felt to be more stringent. To the credit of many
of these ameliorations we may fairly lay claim; while in science, and its
application to the arts, we have sustained no disgraceful rivalry with our
transatlantic brethren. But no generous man thinks his debt of gratitude canceled
till it is thrice repaid, and we have therefore yet much to do, before we can say
that America is no longer the debtor of England. Let us, then, seize this one
opportunity which a son of her own has offered us, and build with it a pharos, whose
light shall serve as well to guide the mariner in the distant horizon, as to
illuminate him who casts anchor at its foot.

But what are we offered instead of the advantages which we might hope to reap from
such a library as I have described? We are promised experiments and lectures, a
laboratory and an audience hall. Sir, a laboratory is a charnel house, chemical
decomposition begins with death, and experiments are but the dry bones of science.
It is the thoughtful meditation alone of minds trained and disciplined in far other
halls, that can clothe these with flesh, and blood, and sinews, and breathe into
them the breath of life. Without a library, which alone can give such training and
such discipline, both to teachers and to pupils, all these are but a masqued
pageant, and the demonstrator is a harlequin. This is not a question of idle
speculation, it is one that experience has answered. There are no foci which are
gathering and reflecting so much light upon the arcana of natural science as the
schools of Paris and of Germany, and all scholars are agreed that the great
libraries of those seminaries, and the mental discipline acquired by the use of
them, are, if not the sole means, at least necessary conditions, of their surpassing
excellence.

But we are told that these experimental researches will guide us to the most
important of all knowledge, that, namely, of common things. Sir, what are common
things? Is nothing common but these material frames of ours; nothing, but the
garments we wear, the habitations that shelter, and the food that nourishes us;
nothing, but the air we breathe, the fowls of heaven, the beasts of the field, the
herbs, the trees, and the rocks around us? Is nothing common but the glittering
sands beneath our feet, and the glittering stars on which we gaze? Sir, these are
indeed common, and well it is to understand their uses, and so far as our dim vision
can pierce, even their natures also. But are there not things even more common,
nearer to our inmost selves, harder indeed, but more profitable to be understood;
object not limited by the three dimensions, not ponderable, not cognizable by any of
the senses, and yet subjects of precise definition, of logical argument, of
philosophical interest, and of overwhelming importance? Sir, the soul of man is a
very common thing; his relations to his Maker and to his fellows, the laws of his
moral and intellectual being, his past history and his probable future destiny, the
principles of government and the laws of political economy--all these are common
things, the commonest indeed of all things, and shall we make no provision for
instruction in these?

But, sir, the knowledge of what are called the physical sciences is of far less
importance, even in reference to the very objects which they are supposed especially
to promote, than is generally believed. There was an age--I should say
ages--brilliant and glorious ages of philosophers, of statesmen, of patriots, of
heroes, and of artists, and artizans too; when, as yet,

the sciences of chemistry, and mineralogy, and metallurgy had neither name nor
being--when experimental research was unknown, and the raw material of the arts was
prepared for subsequent manipulation in no laboratory but the hidden workshops of
nature--when the profoundest philosophers were content with resolving all material
things into the four elements and men knew nothing of that subtle analysis and those
strange powers, whereby the elements themselves are decomposed, the ingredients of
the atmosphere solidified, and granite, porphyry and adamant, resolved into
imperceptible gases. And what, sir, have our boasted researches taught us to
accomplish in the industrial arts, that the cunning workmen of Egypt, and Tyre, and
Greece could not do three thousand years ago? Can our machinery rear loftier piles
that the pyramids, or move more ponderous masses than the stones of Persepolis, or
the monolithic temples of Egypt? Is a European princess arrayed in finer webs than
the daughter of a Pharaoh, or decked in colors more gorgeous than the Tyrian purple?
Can the chemistry of England compound more brilliant or more durable pigments than
those which decorate the walls of the catacombs of the Nile? Can the modern artist,
with all the aid of his new magnifiers, rival the microscopic minuteness of some
ancient mosaics; or can the glass-workers of our times surpass the counterfeit gems
of antiquity?

Sir, modern chemistry, metallurgy, and machinery have multiplied, cheapened, and
diffused-- not improved--the products of industrial art; and herein lies our
superiority, not that we can do better, but, by bringing to our aid the
obedient forces of nature, we can do more, than our predecessors. In
this point of view, regarding modern improvements in these arts as the great
equalizers of the conditions of different ranks in society, no man can estimate them
more highly than I do, and I hope soon to have an opportunity of showing that I duly
appreciate them. But I must protest against that classification of the objects of
human knowledge, which, by giving them an undue pre-eminence, elevates empiricism
above true science, prefers matter to mind, and, in its zeal to advance the means,
quite loses sight of the end.

Sir, these arts are the right hand, not the spirit, of true progressive democracy;
they are the lever that shall move the world, not the immaterial mind that shall
guide it.

Mr. Chairman, at present I neither propose nor expect any modification of this bill.
I am content with it as an experiment, though I should prefer the appropriation of
the entire income of the fund for one generation--three times only as long as it has
now lain idle--to the purpose of founding such a library as the world has not yet
seen. If I support the bill, I shall support it, I repeat, as an experiment, but in
the confident hope that the plan will soon be so changed as to make the Smithsonian
Institution a fitter representative of a charity which embraces all knowledge as its
object, and appoints the whole human race its beneficiaries.